A Dream of Lemoncakes
by theblinginthenorth
Summary: After the final battle, a broken man returns to Winterfell, where a young maiden awaits. Can Stannis Baratheon-his ambitions finally realized-find true peace in the ruins of his kingdom? Can Sansa Stark outlive her girlhood dreams and learn to love this cold lord? Winter may be coming... but for now it is spring.


A note: This story was inspired by episode #113 of the Podcast of Ice and Fire, which covers George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones and its sequels. In particular, Amin revealed during this episode that there exists fanfiction shipping Stannis and Sansa, a fact that rightly horrified all the hosts for pure wrongness. I was morbidly motivated to write this fic today, which I release in the hopes that it brings other Stansan shippers to their senses. It includes spoilers for all five published books. Enjoy… or don't.

The godswood had always been a place of warmth. Even as the first flakes of a spring snow drifted over Winterfell, fingers of steam rose from the pool beneath the weirwood tree where the guests had assembled. Sansa Stark, her thick fur cloak draped over a gown of fine grey silk, even felt a trickle of perspiration roll down her cheek as she awaited her betrothed.

_My knight approaches_.

Years of war and horror had poisoned Sansa's childhood dreams, of brave warriors and gentle maidens and lemoncakes in Highgarden. Too easily could she recall the crunch of Meryn Trant's mailed fist, the scream of Lysa Arryn, the wordless gurgle of Petyr Baelish in his dying breath. But the girl she had been was not gone, not truly, and weddings and feasts and gowns could soften even the most jaded woman's heart. Her tummy fluttered, if only for a moment, as Stannis Baratheon entered the glade.

Truth be told, he did not look the part. The Lord of Dragonstone had never been a handsome man, and with the scars from Winterfell and the burns from the Battle of the Long Night, he was now a fearsome sight. Several of the women trembled visibly, and not the way they had for Garlan Tyrell or the Red Viper.

_They looked away from the Hound, too_.

Unbidden, the memories of Sandor's death leapt to her mind. All of King's Landing had been shocked when the younger Clegane brother had limped up to the sept of Baelor and offered his sword as the Faith's champion in Cersei Lannister's trial. Was this the Hound's last trick on the gods, whom he so loathed? It was only when Sandor, bloodied and staggering, removed Robert Strong's head in one clean stroke, only for graveworms to ooze out of the helm, that the realm knew the full measure of the Hound's vengeance. After that, it was barely surprising to see Clegane volunteer to sail north when Queen Daenerys marched against the Others. "I ran from a life of death," he was said to have claimed in his cups, "but the gods brought me back to kill. Mayhaps the only way I can die is to face those who cannot." The men who manned the Wall in that fateful stand told Sansa afterward that Sandor had refused a torch, riding Stranger into a sea of Others and wights armed only with a broadsword and a dragonglass dagger. Later, when a half-scarred wight on a blue-eyed destrier marched against the Wall, it was Jon Snow himself who fired the flaming arrow that finally gave Sandor Clegane his peace.

_Why can I only love broken men?_

Petyr Baelish had not been broken, but she had never loved him. He had done his best to win her heart, with his gowns of Myrish lace, his kind smiles, and his gentle wit. The smiles came all too easily, however, as did the touches, and the kisses. And one evening, after one too many cups of wine, he had bid goodnight to "Cat," and Sansa had shivered deep inside. She thought, then, of Littlefinger, who would appear less and less in those days, but always reminded her of the throne room, and Baelor, and the Moon Door.

She had remembered to smile on the morning of the wedding. Petyr had liked that. "Harry will be kind to you, my sweet," he'd told her. "He'll be a proper Lord of the Eyrie, and when we're ready, he'll win back Winterfell for you, or die trying," Baelish had said, and Littlefinger's eyes gleamed for a moment. Then he selected a lemoncake, and offered the basket to Sansa. "Eat heartily, sweetling," he urged. "Today you shall be wed, and the time for tears will be over." He bit into the sweet.

"I hope so, my lord," Sansa had responded. "I used my last Tears on those lemoncakes."

_I was already condemned as a poisoner. Can any man blame me for trying to earn the title?_

After that was gasping, and silence. Then clamor and commotion; but the lords of the Vale, no fools they, were wise enough to appreciation the elimination of a dangerous player at no cost to themselves. The letter Sansa produced, intercepted en route to an waiting assassin amongst Harry's household guard, confirmed Baelish's treachery. Littlefinger would never have trusted such details to a messenger, but Petyr was a softer man, and the lure of Sansa's Tully hair was a greater threat to his plotting than a hundred of Varys' little birds.

The Lords of the Vale were less receptive to her refusal to wed Harry, but intrigued by her counter-offer: he must win Winterfell for her first, then marry. The headstrong Young Falcon accepted on the spot, and as Littlefinger had known, the Vale had been itching for a fight for years.

If it was conquest they wanted, however, they were sore disappointed. The host surprised a beleaguered Dreadfort contingent at Moat Cailin, but the Moat's natural defenses allowed the Bolton men to hold the Neck for weeks before they were overwhelmed. Fifty miles south of Castle Cerwyn, the deep snows began, and the army's progress slowed to a crawl. Stannis kept his main force in Winterfell—avoiding Bolton's Folly, as it had become known—but he sent 400 men, many of them clansmen, to harry the supply train. The riders would strike at night, by day, burning the great war wayns, cutting the wires that gave the trebuchets their deadly tension, and killing the Vale's spare mounts. Cerwyn had been emptied of all but a token force, so it only resisted for a few days. At Winterfell, however, Stannis had readied thousands of men—the Stormlands combined with the strength of White Harbor, Barrowton, Last Hearth, and the wildlings beyond the wall. For days all Sansa could her from her covered wayn were the sounds of iron and death. "I will evict this false king from your castle within a week, my lady," Harry had promised her, but within a week he was dead, felled by an Umber's axe during an ill-advised sortie.

The Young Falcon's death broke the Vale Lords, many of whom had already been viewing the entire venture with distaste. "Lysa Arryn had the right idea," Lady Waynwood had been heard to mutter, and more than a few lords were inclined to agree. Meanwhile, tensions were already rising over the matter of the succession, with Nestor Royce assuming the position of the Protector of the Vale in lieu of heirs to Arryn, and Bronze Yohn asserting his line's superior claim. What the Lords could agree upon was that the battle for Winterfell was unwinnable, and, raising a white banner, they submitted themselves to the mercy of Stannis Baratheon.

In any other year this would have been suicide, but the war at the Wall was not going well, and Lord Commander Snow was already displeased that Stannis had withdrawn so many soldiers to defend Winterfell. Bronze Yohn lost his head for his leadership of the treasonous expedition, along with Lyn Corbray, who had tried to murder Stannis during the parlay. The Lords Hunter, Redfort, Belmore, and Templeton were permitted to take the black, and their men were allowed to serve the Watch as free men—or face the sword. Lady Waynwood and Sansa had remained Stannis' "guests" at Winterfell.

_Once my gaoler, now my lover. A year can change a man._ Or was it her who had changed?

Westeros's one true king strode through the clearing, head raised high. The assembled guests, a mixture of Northern and Southern lords and ladies, looked on Stannis Baratheon with both pride and fear. Not a one had loved the man before he sailed north, and he had shown them little kindness in those cold years of death. He had demanded their fathers' allegiance and executed them when they had refused to pledge it. From those whose offered fealty, he took gold, and men, and returned corpses, or bones. His allies had been rewarded—the King's council was filled with Manderlys and Umbers and Dornishmen, while the Unsullied commander served as Master-at-Arms, and the clansmen saw their land holdings double. _Love_, however, was not an easy word for people to use where Stannis Baratheon was concerned.

_But he is their hero! Not Azor Ahai, true, but the savior of the realm nonetheless!_

Sansa thought back to her first meeting with Stannis, in the great hall of Winterfell. Though the king had spoken to her in the formal tones of a monarch addressing his subject, his discomfort with speaking to a woman was evident. "My lady," he greeted her stiffly. "I welcome you home, but it grieves me to see you in the company of traitors."

"Please, your grace…" She averted her eyes, focusing instead on the stones at her feet. Her experience with powerful men—kings, especially—had taught her that your deference toward them boosted their egos, making them more generous and pliant. Nervousness, too, made you seem weaker and more vulnerable. "If it please your grace to punish traitors…p-p-punish me. I… I asked them to win Winterfell for me. I beg you…l-l-let them go."

"Look at me, child." Stannis' icy tone cut through her stammering, but when she turned her tear-stained face to him, she saw a sort of softness in the king's visage—pity, was it? A tender heart, deeply hidden? "You are the trueborn Lady of Winterfell, and it is within your rights to seek the castle. The men who fought for you, however, committed treason when they took up arms against Westeros' rightful king. The Vale will not rule Winterfell in your name. But I shall."

The king left for the Wall two days later, leaving Justin Massey in charge of Winterfell. But after a week with Massey's wit and flattery, Sansa longed for the iron honesty of Stannis. Massey had the easy arrogance of the Southron lords Sansa had grown to loathe and fear in King's Landing. Moreover, according to her ladies in waiting, the knight had also been rather solicitous of Asha Greyjoy, who had perished in the first Battle of Winterfell. Sansa may have been a little girl, but she well knew the ambitions that drove men to whisper sweet nothings in a woman's ear.

_Joffrey could be a gentleman as well_.

Stannis had reached the weirwood tree, with its white bark dancing in the sunlight that slanted through the red leaves and cast strange shadows all around the clearing. _We are both strangers here_. Stannis, course, was raised with the marriage customs of the Seven, and had lived much of his life on a rock in the sea with no godswood. Until just a few months ago, meanwhile, he pledged his life to the Lord of Light, Rh'llor. And Sansa… she had never loved the godswood, frightened by the heart trees, with their sagging red faces and the ethereal breezes which swept through their leaves. She had preferred to wander in the Glass Garden, where she and Jeyne Poole would wander amongst the greenery and make-believe they were maidens of the south. She would breathe upon the glass and draw pictures in the fog it left—a dragon menacing Princess Sansa, a brave knight rescuing her.

Clearly uncomfortable with the rituals asked of him, Stannis swallowed nervously. Saving the realm had wrought an unexpected change in the man, seemingly extinguishing the steely confidence he'd once possessed. A messiah convinced of his holy destiny had ridden off to the Wall, but the man who returned was terribly changed—almost aimless. More than once Sansa had asked himself whether Stannis had expected to die in the final battle, had perhaps even wanted to. What was a man to do _after_ saving mankind?

But there was steel yet. "Who comes before the god?" Stannis' crisp voice cut through the stillness.

A pause, then. Birds nesting in the upper reaches of the forest twittered gaily, unaware of the sacred ritual happening below. Among the guests, a young child—a rare sight, these days—chattered to his mother. Kneeling at the back, his massive head still visible, Hodor _hodored_ nervously.

_It is time_. "I do." She stepped forward. "Sansa of House Stark comes here to be wed. A woman grown and flowered, trueborn and noble, she comes to beg the blessings of the gods. Who comes to claim me?"

She had argued for long nights with Stannis about this. Wedding customs might differ within Westeros, but the bride must always be _given away_, whether by simple words or by the transfer of a maiden's cloak.

"I will not have it," she had told him forthrightly. It had been Joffrey who gave her away for her first wedding, to the Imp, and Petyr who would have given her away to Harry Hardyng. "Your grace, I am no man's plaything, nor his gift. If I am to be wed," she had said, "I will give myself away."

"My lady…" he faltered. Romance came naturally to few men, and to see Stannis Baratheon fumbling at affection was like watching a kraken ride a horse. "If you do not want me… If you should prefer some other…"

Sansa had forestalled his words with a finger to his lips. "Never doubt my love, your Grace." She smiled warmly, her blue eyes shining with affection. "I have given away my heart. Is that not enough?"

"It is… more, Sansa. It is more than enough."

_Passion arises from the most unexpected places_.

As she reached the weirwood under which Stannis waited, the king took her hands in a grip that was gentle but firm. "I do. King Stannis of House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Realm, and Champion of the Night. I claim you. Who binds us?"

_What binds us?_

Sansa had asked that of herself many times in the days leading up to the wedding, but she could not point to an individual instance, to one moment. Stannis' return had not been memorable. The King of Westeros returned to Winterfell in the last days of winter, leading a weary procession of just over two hundred soldiers. That was Sansa's first hint at just how close the battle had been, how easily it could have been the Great Other marching on Winterfell to enslave the realms of men. Of the heads of the dragon, her husband had been the first to fall. Sansa could not believe her ears at first—Tyrion Lannister, the Imp, the Kingslayer, a secret Targaryen? But the stories all matched up; they told how the Imp had crossed the narrow sea on dragonback with Daenerys, entered King's Landing under a false banner of peace, and then slaughtered Aegon and his men to claim the city for themselves.

_Tyrion Lannister, twice the Kingslayer, and twice kinslayer too._

His end had been far more noble, however. When the stories came down from the Wall, telling of thousands of Others, and fifty wights for each Other, Tyrion had initially counseled patience, preferring to let Stannis Baratheon fight off the threat and exhaust his forces. But as the magnitude of the danger to Westeros became clear, Daenerys had insisted on attacking, and Tyrion had relented. He had entered the fray on the back of Rhaegal, dealing death all around him. It took one hundred Others and wights to surround the dragon and wrest the dwarf from his saddle. Separated, both Rhaegal and Tyrion succumbed quickly. Daenerys lasted much longer, with Drogon blasting fire at wights from the air and staying out of the rage of the Others' vicious blades. It took seven Others, riding undead eagles, to bring down the magnificent black beast. Only Jon Snow, riding the white dragon Viserion, survived, yet even he saw his mount brought down by a net, and barely survived after that.

_My brother Jon_…_the heir to Westeros?_

Many had expected it to come to blows between Jon and Stannis after the battle, and few would have doubted the outcome. True, Stannis was a great warrior, and he had fearlessly charged out to defend Jon when the net brought down his dragon. With naught but a small band of wildlings and Westerosi, the Lord of Dragonstone fought off wave after wave of Others while Jon extricated himself from underneath Viserion's corpse. Tormund Giantsbane fell beside him, and Brienne of Tarth, the warrior maid, while Stannis alone survived. Stannis would go down in legend alongside Ryam Redwyne and Barristan Selmy as one of the greatest fighters of his day. But Jon was Azor Ahai reborn, and when the battle seemed all but lost and Longclaw took flame, revealing itself as the true Lightbringer, nobody could doubt that the true king had been crowned. Jon needed only to claim his inheritance as the trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen and cut down Stannis if he challenged him.

Jon turned down the job.

The Great Other was still out there, Jon told his stunned followers, and winter, which was just ending, would come again. The surviving men could not believe that, or would not. There was no Great Other, they claimed, or else it lay dead before them on the field of corpses. But Lord Snow would not be moved. The wall lay in ruins, and someone would need to rebuild it, to garrison the castles, to mend the north.

And so Stannis Baratheon had returned south, still the true king of Westeros, if a little shell-shocked and weary. His forces rested at Winterfell for months as the spring arrived and the snow melted. The keeps which had been damaged over the course of three battles were repaired slowly, and Winterfell began to regain a bit of its old splendor. The northmen returned to their castles to see their wives, plant new crops, sire new sons.

And Stannis Baratheon wandered. The King was busy every day—there were lands to grant, marriages to arrange, punishments to mete out. But all could tell that Stannis was a broken man, that the battle had sapped him of his will to rule, his thirst. In the afternoons the king would bring his horse out from Winterfell, ordering his guards to stay behind, and ride through the Northern hills. What he was looking for, or what he found, no man knew.

One day Sansa followed him.

She did not know why she did so. Perhaps she recognized a fellow sufferer, another trapped soul like herself. True, they could not have been more different. She had spent her adolescence a prisoner—of Joffrey, Cersei, the Imp, and later Lysa Arryn and Petyr Baelish. She had even been _his_ prisoner. But Stannis had made his own prison as well. For years he had seethed as first Renly, then Ned Stark, then the bastard Joffrey, took power that by rights should have been his. Rights and duty and justice—these came to define him, to enslave him. His ambition became _him_. In his thirst he turned to the red woman, who gave him the power he sought but at a terrible cost. Only when she died, her lifeblood dripping on the sword of the Faceless Girl, did he learn that the power had been within him the whole time. In the end, however, the justice he had worked so hard to achieve felt hollow. Sansa's dreams had been shattered, while his were fulfilled beyond his wildest dreams. So why did they share the same feeling of emptiness?

She knew none of this at the time, of course, carrying only the sense that perhaps kind words could help heal a wounded man. She found Stannis at the high hill where, long ago in another world, a man named Eddard Stark had beheaded traitors. Sansa had never seen it happen—in those days the sight of blood still made her tummy queasy—but she recognized the worn stump and the ancient stains, and she thought she smelled death on the wind. Or was that scent everywhere, in these days of sorrow?

"Your Grace…" she began, not wishing to startle the king.

Stannis was facing away from her, looking at the mossy stump where Starks had delivered justice for millennia. He nodded toward the indentation in the wood, worn away by a thousand strokes of Ice.

"Your father was a just man," he began without preamble, without asking why she had come. "Tell me, my lady," he asked, turning. "Did Lord Stark take pleasure from dispensing with traitors, or other criminals?"

Sansa swallowed. In the three weeks since Stannis' return , this was the closest she'd been to the king, and she was uncomfortably aware of how piercing his dark blue eyes could be.

"Lord Stark…my father…he never took pleasure in dealing the King's Justice; he would always say that. But he did his duty. He had to!" she finished, sputtering, as if it were her father on trial again.

Stannis nodded, in what seemed to be an attempt at reassurance "He did at that. And his other duties—defending his lands, disciplining his bannermen, collecting taxes. Did these bring him joy?"

"My mother always had to tell him to put on his Lord's face, to deal with the bannermen, your Grace. I do not think he loved to wield his power."

"Nor should any man. But tell me, child. Was your father…?" and here he seemed to struggle for words… "Was he a happy man?"

Sansa did not know how to answer that question, nor did she know what answer the king wanted, and the trepidation showed on her face. Stannis saw her hesitation and brusquely turned away.

"No matter," he muttered, eyes fixed firmly on the ground. "It was not a…kingly…question."

But Sansa wrestled with it herself, for she had often wondered at her father's stoic demeanor, his grim faces. In Old Nan's tales the brave young men who won wars and married beautiful princesses and lived in big castles with lots of children were always happy… weren't they? Her father was a war hero, she knew that much, and her mother Catelyn still had some of her maiden's beauty. And Winterfell was grim and dark compared to the green finery of Highgarden and the golden turrets of Casterly Rock, but it was still a castle and it still had knights and ladies, didn't it? "Why doesn't he ever _smile_," she had wailed at her mother once. "Doesn't he love us?"

"Your father loves you and your brothers and sisters more than you will ever know," Catelyn had told her sternly. "But the burdens of lordship are heavy. And winter is coming."

Sansa placed a hand on the king's cloak. _When did I become so familiar with him? I should not presume_. "If it please your grace," she said, "my father…allowed himself little happiness. But I remember his smile. When Bran and Rickon and Arya were born. When Robb ran down his first scarecrow in the yard. When I made him a cloak sewn with a big grey direwolf…he smiled then. Arya said the direwolf looked like a pig and I chased her across the yard. But he smiled, and he thanked me."

Again, Stannis did not turn, but took this in silence. Sansa did not know if she was helping, but she added, "Your Grace, all the North grieves for your… your wife and daughter. I did not know them, but when I heard of their deaths at the wall, I wept all night."

"I shed no tears." Stannis turned, and his face was full of tears now, though for Selyse and Shireen, or for his missing grief, Sansa could not tell. "It was too cold for grief. I was too cold. They wasted away. They were too…too weak."

"Hush now…" and she actually _put her hand on his shoulder_. "Let us not speak ill of the dead."

He gave a harsh laugh, breaking the moment. She jerked her hand back. "Look around you, Sansa. What else shall we speak of?"

_He called me Sansa._

"We speak of the living. We speak of us. Your Grace."

Jon Snow cut an imposing figure as he stepped out of the ranks of the guests. The last traces of boyhood had long since disappeared from his face, leaving the solemn face of a man steeled by lordship and scarred by war. Sansa tried to recall the Jon she had known as a child, but she could barely see it in this stranger, who was once her brother but now was no longer even that. He was dressed in the black of the Night's Watch, carried the great sword Lightbringer at his waist, and was accompanied by the fearsome Ghost, but the most frightful thing about Jon Snow was his eyes.

Red eyes that burned like fire.

Not much was known about Jon's resurrection other than the fact that he had unquestionably died, and that it was Melisandre who brought him back. The eyes were the only visible remnant, but something about the way Jon Snow carried himself, or the intensity of the stares which he directed at his interlocutors, made common folk and lords alike uncomfortable. For this reason, among others, Sansa was glad that it was Stannis who was king.

"I shall bind them," Jon proclaimed. "I, Jon Snow of House Targaryen, trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, the nine hundred and ninety-ninth Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, the Champion of the Night, and Azor Ahai reborn, who was her brother, and shall remain so forever. Lady Sansa, will you take this man?"

_This is the moment you have waited for all your life_.

It was so unbearably _Stannis_ that the one romance of his life would begin at an execution site. Not that anything truly began there, of course. Sansa did not see the king for another two weeks, but one night at dinner he asked her, ever so awkwardly, if she would accompany him on a ride the next day. She said yes without a moment's hesitation. Did she know then? Perhaps…but then again, when it came to matters of the heart, who could really know anything?

They spoke little on the ride, and when she tried to draw him out she could always feel the wall of ice which protected him, that imprisoned him. Sansa could only touch the surface, try to melt away a corner at a time, and she never again saw the moment of naked vulnerability that she'd seen that first day on the hill. So she opted for diversions. She showed him the spot in the forest where the trees gave way to a perfectly circular bed of flowers, and recounted how as a girl she would lie in the bed and pretend it was her maiden's cloak. She showed him where the mountain stream plunged underground and told of an afternoon of trying to follow the river's course back to Winterfell. And she brought him to the circle of massive boulders which Arya had said were trolls, petrified by the sunlight but liable to be reanimated at any moment. Then she felt sadness, for Arya, and embarrassment, because of the silly girlish tales she was telling the King of Westeros.

But the king had reassured her, in that wooden manner she would later grow to love, and Sansa for the first time saw hints of a smile playing around the edges of his face. Later in the week he had only to nod at her, and when she came to the stables she saw that he had already had her favorite horse saddled and watered. Soon they were riding together every day, and Sansa felt the ice receding, however glacially.

She had heard the rumors for weeks from the stablehands and her ladies-in-waiting, that Stannis meant to leave soon for King's Landing to claim his rightful seat. She could not bear to bring it up during their rides, while Stannis, of course, would never raise the issue on his own. Eventually the nature of the rumors shifted, though: what was taking Stannis so long? The realm would not wait for him long—already there was word that the remnants of the Tyrell bannermen were proposing to install some stripling from Oldtown as king. Temporarily, of course. Wyman Manderly, ruling as Hand of the King in his stead, was a capable man, but he could not be expected to represent an absentee king forever.

Finally Sansa worked up the gumption to just come out and ask. The king's response floored her.

"My lady, I have been waiting because… I wish you to accompany me to King's Landing."

Sansa recognized these words as the greatest leap of faith Stannis Baratheon had ever taken. And that made it ten times as hard to respond as she had to.

"Your grace… you flatter me. But—my Lord father would tell me: there must always be a Stark in Winterfell. I cannot leave."

What showed on Stannis' face could not have been anything but a smile.

"This I know well, my lady. But I have had just had word from Davos this morning. Rickon is but three days' ride from Winterfell."

Sansa trusted Stannis, but even after hearing his story she was still expecting, in her heart of hearts, that the boy who arrived with Lord Davos Seaworth would be some dark-haired impostor, just as her poor friend Jeyne Poole had been forced to stand in for Arya. Shaggydog, however, was much harder to fake, and as Rickon dismounted from his garron she had no doubt that this was indeed her baby brother. The reunion was joyful, though the children barely remembered each other, and there were tears for the missing Robb, Arya, and Bran, not to mention their mother and father.

Rickon had only been installed as Lord of Winterfell a week when Stannis took his leave. And Sansa did accompany him, even though Rickon could not understand why his sister was abandoning him so soon. Truth be told, neither did Sansa.

"I must help Lord Stannis pacify the South," she told him before she left. "We need to show that Stannis has the support of all houses, even those who were thought extinguished. Listen to Lady Mormont and the Greatjon, and no harm will come to you. I will return before you know it."

She had kept her word. The trip south had been long, and the endless politics of King's Landing a bore. The nerve of these men, to haggle over coppers and negotiate with a man who had saved their skins while they hid in the South. Many of the lords and ladies, too, still saw Sansa as a kingslayer, unable or unwilling to believe the confessions that Tyrion had extracted from Margaery before having her put to death. By the end she had confessed not only to poisoning Joffrey, but even to killing Tywin, and Robert before them.

_It is a city full of rats_, she told herself_, and you are above them now._

Stannis certainly made it seem that way. Ostensibly she was there to promote the unity of the Great Houses, but she oft felt like a queen touring her kingdom. She rode through Maidenpool on a fine white filly beside the king, and the common people came out to cheer for Stannis. _And for me, _she realized_, and for us._ When they arrived in the city, Manderly threw a feast for them which the realm would long remember.

The people knew what was happening, even if Stannis did not, even if Sansa would not admit it to herself. What amazed her was how easily she played the part, how she could sit at the high table and jest with the ladies, tease and compliment the lords, while Stannis by her side stumbled over the basic words of courtesy. She would needle him a bit as well, however gently, and before long the nobility of King's Landing knew that if you wanted to get a joke out of Stannis Baratheon, you had to go through the Lady Sansa first. Alone, the words flowed more easily from the king, and there were long nights in the King's Tower when Stannis Baratheon would tell her stories from the war, or tales of his childhood, of growing up with Robert and Renly.

He wanted her, too—she was not too young to notice that. Stannis Baratheon would always narrow his eyes when he spoke to you, as if you had committed some crime, and he was tasked with discerning your punishment. When he looked at Sansa, however, the gaze was different—wider, but somehow more intense. And when she wore the low-cut gowns that were in fashion in King's Landing, he would stare open-mouthed, forgetting even to grind his teeth. For her part, although he was no Loras Tyrell, she found his steely demeanor and his ungainly courtesy intriguing. He was a dangerous man, but the vulnerability that he showed in every human encounter was attractive and endearing. The wounds of war she could stomach—she had loved uglier men—and underneath the scars was an honest face.

It took one week of Stannis' half-started conversations for her to realize that he was trying to ask for her hand, and another week for her to get so fed up that she asked him herself. "Why?" he asked her.

"Answer me this, your Grace. Have you ever loved another woman?"

Stannis swallowed. For him to say "no," she knew, would be to turn his back forever on Selyse, and on the child they had made together. It was a hard thing she asked of him.

"No."

_Then let us see what sort of man I have found myself. _"And do you love me?"

"With all my heart," Stannis replied.

"Then that is why." And she kissed him. Tentatively at first, then with greater passion as he leaned in with rough hunger. Sansa had come to Winterfell a maid, but there was far less blushing now.

The Vale had yet to be restored to the King's Peace, and Sansa wanted to see Rickon once more before settling down to a new life in the capital. Thus it was that one morning three of the king's new dromonds—_Fury_, the _Crowned Stag_, and _Lady Sansa_—sailed out of Shipbreaker to make the long voyage north. Just three years ago—had it been that short a time?—Sansa had taken a similar trip, but that had begun under cover of darkness, while the screams of a dying king echoed in her ears. Standing on the deck of the _Lady Sansa_, held tightly in the arms of her beloved, while the entire city waved its goodbyes in the morning sun, felt a much more proper way to depart.

The Eyrie had put up no resistance, and no sooner had the ink dried on the parchment that confirmed the Vale's submission than Stannis was off. He was, he said, eager to reach Winterfell, although one of his men suggested with a wink that he was mostly eager to reach the marriage bed. In years past Stannis might have had the man's tongue for such a comment, and indeed his eyes turned to steel for a moment, but Sansa laid her hand gently on his arm, and Stannis forced out a chuckle that stunned the ship's whole crew.

Indeed, the king who arrived back at Winterfell was a changed man. Renly he would never be, but the ice was almost completely gone. He spoke kindly to the men who attended him at White Harbor and on the boat journey up the Knife; he invited all the lords of the North to a grand royal feast, on the Crown's expense. And his eyes sparkled whenever Sansa stood on her toes to kiss him. That mattered most of all.

"I take this man," she said.

"Wait one second," said Jon Snow. "This is ridiculous. Completely out of character for both of you."

The assembled guests snapped out of their reverie and looked at the Lord Commander in confusion.

"Let me get this straight," Jon continued. "You—my sister—love Stannis Baratheon. That's what you're telling me? Sansa Stark, whose two great loves are lemoncakes and arranged marriage between fairy princesses and dragon knights, has fallen in _actual romantic love_ with the least dashing tightass in Westeros?"

Sansa's tiny head was filled with confusion. "Yes, Jon," she insisted. "Underneath the ice, there is a great and tender man. I showed Stannis the value of life, the meaning of love—"

"Bullshit! I don't believe it for a second," her brother interrupted. He turned to Stannis. "And you! Your Grace, you saved my life on the battlefield and for that I shall forever be in your debt. You are Westeros' one true king, let there be no doubt. But I gave you VERY specific instructions when I saw you off from the wall. Do you remember them?"

"Try not to-" Stannis mumbled…

"Speak louder," Jon urged. "The Realm is watching."

"Try Not To Be Such A Grim Creepster," Stannis enunciated, halfheartedly.

"AND THIS DEFINITELY COUNTS!" Jon exploded. "And I don't even understand. What do you see in her? I mean, she's my sister, I love her and everything, but come on, airhead much?"

Sansa was too shellshocked to be insulted. Stannis tried to fumble out an excuse. "Opposites attract, I guess? The strong, silent warrior, blushing maiden, destined to fall in love type thing?"

But Jon was shaking his head. "No, that crap only happens in the stories Old Nan used to tell. In the real world, fully-developed characters take decisions that reflect realistic trajectories of personal growth, not the whims of some fickle Narrator. This smells to me…of magic."

There was a rustling in the bushes. "It is, my Lord!" Melisandre of Asshai emerged from the forest and approached the wedding party. "I came as soon as I saw the signs, yet I feared I would be too late. My lord, your sister and your king… have been ensorcelled for months!" And she waved her hand over Stannis and Sansa, who reeled as a surge of powerful magic washed across them.

Sansa staggered, fell to her knees. The morning's breakfast came into her throat and she retched, her head awash with confused emotions and missing memories. She turned to look at the man she… loved? … and his narrowed eyes and piercing glare left her cold. This was wrong. She thought back to their rides around Winterfell, their dinner-table japes, that night in the King's Tower. Wrong, all of it.

"You creep!" she yelled. "I trusted you! I thought I loved you! I MADE LEMONCAKES FOR YOU. LEMONCAAAAAAAAAAAKES!"

Stannis for his part was equally dumbfounded. "I… I cried in front of you? I told jokes at the royal table? I ate your lemoncakes? I HATE LEMONCAAAAAAAAAAAAKES!"

Jon saved his confusion for Melisandre. "But you're dead, aren't you? At the hand of the stabby girl?"

Melisandre waved aside the inquiry. "The Lord of Light had greater plans for me. Lord Snow, I must warn you… the Great Other approaches! And… I think he may be responsible for this curse!"

Suddenly, a gigantic Other burst into the clearing with a crash, then bent double at the waist and wheezed for a solid half minute. When it straightened up, Jon could tell that the Great Other was different—and more powerful—than any of its brethren Jon had ever seen. Where most Others were skeletally thin and naked, this was enormously round at the waist, and clothed head to toe in the rags of dead men. Its breaches were suspended by two massive straps over its shoulders, and it wore a sinister black cap on its round head. The Great Other's sinister white beard was matted with icicles and bloodstains.

It spoke suddenly. "Slander!" the Great Other declared in a high-pitched cackle, its flat tones reminiscent of Crackclaw Point, on the shores just outside of King's Landing. "This… abomination… was never in my plans," he shouted, indicating Sansa and Stannis. "Westeros is doomed to be an icy graveyard, not a romantic paradise. You are supposed to marry Sandor Clegane!" he said, pointing to Sansa Stark. "You, Stannis Baratheon, are to die at the Battle of the Wall, when I finally arrive."

There was an awkward pause, as Jon and Melisandre mentally debated who would have to break the news. "See," Jon eventually began, "we've already had the Battle at the Wall. We got so tired of waiting for you that we sort of…just invited all the Others who were around to come and fight us. War's done, kingdom saved, half the protagonists dead. It's a pretty tidy ending, don't you think?"

The Great Other fell to the ground in despair. "Nooooooooooo! I had it all planned out! You just needed to wait another two, maybe three years! It was going to be perf—-."

Lightbringer ended the greatest threat the realm had ever seen with a short and businesslike thrust.

"Well," said Stannis Baratheon, "now that matter's cleared up, I suppose I'll be on my way. I have to track down and execute anyone who ever heard me tell a joke." The one true king of Westeros ground his teeth. Extra hard—he hadn't done it for weeks now, and he was feeling guilty.

"Not so fast." Jon Snow stood in his way. "I don't care if Bloodraven himself was controlling you. You have committed an act so gross that Craster himself would say, 'OK, that's a bit wrong.'"

"My lord," Stannis stammered. "I did not… we did not… the girl is maiden."

"No kissing either?" asked Jon Snow, eyebrows arched. "No below-the-tunic? You didn't meet with the bog devil at the end of the causeway?"

"My lord… I may have, ah, made a visit or two to Flea Bot—"

"THAT'S ENOUGH, STANNIS." This was Melisandre. "The girl is sixteen! You are thirty-seven!"

"But it happens all the time in Westeros!" the King protested weakly. "Walder Frey married—"

"We are NOT THE FREYS," Jon thundered. "And most families have the decency not to pretend there's going to be _love_ there. I will not sit idly by while you star in your own romance novel!"

Melisandre moved quickly to concur. "I asked Rh'llor for a vision of 'the wedding of Sansa Stark and Stannis Baratheon.' He showed me a giant flaming middle finger."

The High Septon, who had certainly been in King's Landing until a moment ago, popped into the conversation. "We're checking with the law books of the Seven now, but we're pretty sure that making a young girl think she's in love with you despite literally years of character development over thousands of pages, for both of you…is an offense against gods and men. If not, we'll make it one."

"MERCY!" Stannis Baratheon threw himself at Jon Snow's feet. "My lord, I repent! I beg forgiveness. I beseech you, remember that I defended the Seven Kingdoms, that I rescued you, that I offered to make you Lord of Winterfell. Is that nothing?

"Nothing?" Jon Snow's voice was a sad chuckle. "No, not nothing, your Grace. Never nothing. The realm will long remember your service. You should know this better than any man: the creepy deed does not wash out the good, nor the good the creepy."

Lightbringer descended


End file.
